Clay Time....

We're beginning clay projects.  After experimenting with some other brands of air dry clay last year, I'm back to using Crayola Air Dry clay.  It's not so great, but I haven't found any other brand that's reasonably priced and better.

3rd graders are making these cute BUNNIES.  They're hollow in the middle so they can kind of be used as finger puppets too.

2nd graders are making CUPCAKE Boxes.  Next time I need to remember to give kids a ball of clay closer to the size of a golf ball than the size of an apricot for making the bottom of their cupcake.  The walls of clay were thicker than I prefer, hopefully they'll dry okay.

Lots of messy fun ----- a few kids were absent ----  that's one of my biggest challenges in being an art teacher.  So time consuming helping kids get caught up who've been absent.  In the past I worked at a large school, so it was virtually impossible to offer all the time necessary for all the absent kids.  Now I offer make-up arrangements for absent kids.

How do you deal with absent students from your art classes?  Would love to get your ideas.

Christmas Art 2012 - RoundUp!

Here are the art lessons I had fun sharing with my students during the month of December.  I teach at a Christian school and December is a very special month.

Kinder/1st Grade painted a starry night sky and pasted this poem on the bottom (ha, not really pasted, we used glue sticks.....do they even make that thick smelly white paste I used as a kid soooooo many years ago?)

A bright star lit the heavens

To light the Magi's way

To the baby in the manger

Who was born on Christmas day

Materials used:

white construction paper

blue and white tempera paint

q-tips for white stars

yellow construction paper stars

2nd Grade made poinsettia flowers and glued this poem at the bottom:

At Christmas as we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ

Let's keep in mind the truth of Christmas Day

It's our gift of love to others, in every way

Materials used:

construction paper

we also used scrapbook paper for added interest in the green leaves

glue & glitter

3rd/4th grade made these awesome Moulding Trees and you can find more info. here.

5th grade painted angels.

They drew in pencil, outlined with black crayon, and painted with watercolors.

And Lastly 6th grade made Mini Manger Silhouettes.

We used canvas and acrylics.  Students did a practice silhouette first on paper same size as canvas.

Moulding Christmas Trees

This year our wonderful 4th grade teacher at my school found a "Moulding Christmas Tree" in Sunset magazine and asked if I'd help her students each make one.  She and her husband did all the legwork, so it was piece of cake for me.  All I had to do was help students paint the branches.

These are the measurements we used:

Branches are 5 pieces of moulding @ 8", 7", 6", 5", and 4"

Then the top is a small piece of moulding (as shown), or it can be a small triangle of wood.

The trunk is a 1"x1" piece of wood, 18" tall.

The base is 16" across.

Branches were glued on with hot glue and base was attached with screws.

The kids were so proud of their creations!!

"Christmas Eve" Collages

"Christmas Eve" by Henri Matisse was our inspiration 

for these collages.  

They were done by 3rd graders:)

Here is the original, by Matisse.

HOOT-HOOT

Are owls more popular now than they were in the 70's?  I remember making LOTS of macrame owls back then, hmmmmmm what did all those people do with those macrame owls I made for them Christmas?

My Kinder/1st graders made these owls.  Lots of cutting and tracing prep, but it was worth it.  Even with all the pre-made parts, it still took two full periods.
Here are the materials that the students received for the project:

 1st Day - Each child received white construction paper w/ owl parts already traced on it.

2nd Day - Each child received black background paper, grey paper w/ tree branches already traced, 2 yellow eyes, 2 black eyes, 2 feet, 1 beak, 1 moon traced.

Here's the order we used:
1st Day
1.  Traced outlines on owl parts and added feathers and face features with crayon.
2.  Painted all owl parts with watercolors.

2nd Day
3.  Cut & glue tree parts onto background.
4.  Cut & glue owl parts onto background.
5.  Glue face parts onto owl.

6. Cut & glue moon onto background.

Folk Art Style

Big thanks to Holly V. at Lines Dots & Doodles for posting this fun Folk Art lesson.  I had never seen Karla Gerard's artwork before, and it's wonderful inspiration!

These were done by 5th graders and we took 2 class periods to do these paintings.  First we studied the patterns and variety in Karla Gerard's examples that I put on the board.

Then student's drew a rough draft version of their landscape on scratch paper.  Then a real version on construction paper.  Next every line was traced with oil pastels.

Next meeting, the kids painted their pictures with watercolors.

Inspiring Works?

Hmmmm, which artwork has inspired more art lessons than any other?  

For me, it's Kandinsky's "Farbstudie Quadrate" Concentric Circles.  Closely followed by Van Gogh's Starry Night.  Van Gogh's Sunflowers probably comes in third.  

Which famous artwork do you never get tired of using as a source of inspiration for an art lesson?

The pics here were done by my high school students.  

They used acrylics on heavy paper.  Size 6"x8".

I could look at these all day!!!  Thanks NCCS HS students!

3D Paper Scrolls

 NCCS High School

I found this great lesson here, and I thank Miriam for sharing it.  My students enjoyed the lesson very much.  I enjoyed it because it's not as hard as it looks!

First I taught how to make a 3D paper scroll by starting with a curly-que at the top, then attaching vertical lines on the sides of each curve.  Lastly shading the sides.

Students chose colored construction paper.  Drew and shaded a 3D scroll on each color with colored pencils.  Cut them out. Arranged them on their paper.  Then they drew "ghost scrolls" behind the colored scrolls.  Lastly, they cut off the bottom of their paper so all the scrolls touched the bottom.  Another time I taught the lesson, students drew a box with white pencil and then "ghost scrolls" behind the colored scrolls.

 NCCS high school

 5th Grade

POSTERS for your classroom!

      Posters for your classroom, created by your students!

"Poster", "Poster with Theme", "MEGA Poster"

     

I can't tell you how long I've been working on these POSTERS!  Lots of glitches along the way, but I'm sooooo very excited to finally have my first ones available.
More coming soon!  Oops, did I just say soon?  I must be quite the optimist because these took approximately 25 x longer than I expected.  So many percolating projects in my head, hard to get any of them to fruition.
Huge thanks to my DEAR Friend, wonderful mom, senior olympics soccer player, uber community/school volunteer, and awesome Graphic Artist & Web Designer Eileen Vavra!

Fall Leaves

Oil pastels on black construction paper never fails to impress, don't you think?!

For this lesson we practiced a few different types of leaf drawings on scratch paper.  We also talked about complementary (opposite) colors on the color wheel and how the leaves will pop if they used complementary colors for the backgrounds.

Also, for a switch this time, when I taught the kids how to draw the leaves, I had them draw the stem and veins first, then the border of the leaf last.  I think this method worked better, especially for maple and oak leaves.  I also think this method helped the kids draw bigger.  Finally I didn't see any teeny-tiny leaves.  Do you ever feel like a broken record reminding kids not to draw too small?  That line is probably in my top 10 reminders to the kids..........(Now don't get me started on the other 9, my current relaxed state may disappear:)

Kids were each give two 3 1/2" x 5" black pieces of paper for the leaf drawings, and a 9x12" black paper for background.  After gluing on the leaves, they outlined the drawings w/ contrasting pastel colors if they had time.